Studies and Analyses

Scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) and UCLA have pinpointed for the first time a region of the brain responsible for storing and retrieving distant memories. This research is reported in the May 7, 2004 issue of the journal Science.

“It was previously known that the hippocampus processes recent memory, but that the hippocampus did not store memories permanently. We were able to determine that it is the anterior cingulate cortex where older, or lifelong, memories are st

Highly purified soy foods and soy supplements marketed in the United States may stimulate the growth of pre-existing estrogen-dependent breast tumors, according to a study done at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Soy has been correlated with low rates of breast cancer in Asian populations, but soy foods in Asia are made from minimally processed soybeans or defatted, toasted soy flour, which is quite different from soy products consumed in the U.S.,” said William G. Helferich

Practicing rapid deep breathing could help cyclists smash their personal bests. An article published this week in BMC Physiology shows how experienced cyclists can shave minutes off their race times by regularly putting their respiratory muscles through endurance training. The researchers, from University of Arizona, who carried out the study write: “We are unaware of other training methods that result in similar performance increments in experienced bicycle racers.” Twenty highly t

Half of patients treated for depression in primary care facilities during a recent study still suffered from the condition 18 to 24 months later, according to recent research.

Patients who were unemployed, had suicidal thoughts at the beginning of the study and who stopped taking antidepressant medication on their own, before their doctor told them to quit the treatment were more likely to suffer persistent depression symptoms than those who recovered from depression over the course of the

Teens who suffered iron deficiency as infants are likely to score lower on cognitive and motor tests, even if that iron deficiency was identified and treated in infancy, a new University of Michigan study shows.

Betsy Lozoff, who has studied iron deficiency for nearly three decades, followed Costa Rican children who were diagnosed with severe, chronic iron deficiency when they were 12-23 months old and were treated with iron supplements.

She and her collaborators examined 191 child

A team at the University of Rochester has found that the human brain makes much more extensive use of highly complex statistics when learning a language than scientists ever realized. The research, appearing in a recent issue of Cognitive Psychology, shows that the human brain is wired to quickly grasp certain relationships between spoken sounds even though those relationships may be so complicated they’re beyond our ability to consciously comprehend.

“We’re starting to learn just